Kings of Many Castles

12

Charlie got the jump seat, which jammed his knees beneath his chin so tightly he couldn’t have jumped anywhere, difficult anyway after the exertion of already shuttling between the British and American embassies to ensure they were completely up to date before their encounter with George Bendall. At least, Charlie consoled himself, he was opposite the slender-thighed Anne Abbott and not the fatassed Richard Brooking. They travelled initially unspeaking, the lawyer and the diplomat exchanging transcripts of Olga’s interrogation of Bendall and Charlie’s meeting with the NTV cameraman. As Brooking finished Vladimir Sakov’s account of the gantry struggle he looked uncomfortably to the woman, who’d read it first, and said, “Appalling language!”

“Dreadful,” agreed Charlie. “Shouldn’t be allowed.”

Anne smiled at Charlie. “A lot of openings.”

“We’ll do it as we did with the mother.”

“You lead,” said Anne.

“We need to talk about that,” interjected the head of chancellery.

“About what, exactly?” demanded Charlie. He didn’t want the man buggering things up.

“This is not something I’m accustomed to,” admitted Brooking. “In fact, I haven’t ever done anything like it before.”

“All good for the CV,” said Charlie. “Better to let Anne and I handle it, though, don’t you think?”

“I’ve the ranking authority!”

It was an embassy car, with the ambassador’s chauffeur. Charlie was surprised the pompous prick hadn’t insisted on flying the British pennant from the bonnet masthead. “What’s the book say you’ve got to do.” There’d be a guidance book. There always was.

“Ascertain the full facts. Establish the nationality is genuinely British, obtain the passport number if possible. Offer consular assistance. Obtain all United Kingdom residency details to advise next of kin. Make clear any repatriation advance is a loan that has to be repaid and get the applicant’s signature to that agreement,” quoted the man.

Anne covered her mouth with her hand and looked determinedly out of the window at the glued-together traffic.

Jesus! thought Charlie. “Let’s work our way through all that. London’s already established he’s British, with a British registered birth, although he doesn’t hold a British passport as such. There aren’t any United Kingdom residency details and I don’t think, whatever happens, we’ve got to think about repatriation. Agree with me so far?”

“Yes,” said Brooking.

“Ascertaining all the facts is what Anne and I are here to do, right?”

“Right,” accepted Brooking.

“So there we are!” said Charlie, triumphantly. “All you’ve got to do is offer the consular assistance, tell him Anne and I are it, and leave the rest to us.”

“It doesn’t sound much,” said the man, doubtfully.

“It’s your being there, as the ranking diplomatic representative, that’s important,” urged Charlie.

“Yes, of course.” Brooking still sounded doubtful.

Charlie said, “It’s all a great deal more uncertain-more complicated-than it seemed to be at first?”

“Yes,” agreed Brooking.

“Everything’s going to be recorded, that’s part of the cooperation agreement.”

“I understand that.”

“I’m not trying to teach you your job, of course-heaven forbid! — but on something that’s going to be circulated around the highest levels of the Russian and American government it might be better if you waited to ask about anything that’s not immediately clear from our questioning, rather than putting it on tape at the time.”

“Quite! Good thinking.” Brooking smiled, relieved. “All quite straightforward really, isn’t it?”

“The best way’s always straightforward,” sighed Charlie.

“My feelings exactly,” said the man.

One of the several reasons for Charlie’s early morning trip to the centralized incident room had been to ensure with Olga Melnik their acceptance at the Burdenko hospital. They were fifteen minutes ahead of the agreed time but the first security check point was at the ground floor reception. Brooking hurried into the lead, producing his Russian diplomatic credentials and standing vaguely to attention to be compared against an identification photograph that Charlie had given Olga, and in the temporary separation Anne squeezed Charlie’s hand and whispered, “That’s my dinner table anecdote: you try to steal it, I’ll serve an injunction.”

Charlie said, “There’ll be more.”

Virtually as he spoke the protest erupted ahead of them-“I am an accredited representative of Her Majesty’s government, I must not be physically touched!”-and Charlie turned to see Brooking pushing away an attempted body search.

Softly, for only Anne to hear, Charlie said, “Oh fuck, what did I tell you!” Louder Charlie said, “If there’d been that sort of security five days ago, people wouldn’t be dead and maimed and we wouldn’t be here.”

More quietly Anne said, “It’s still not diplomatically permissible.”

The awareness seemed to be registering at the checkpoint. Therewas a huddled conversation and Brooking was ushered through, untouched. There was no attempt to body search either Charlie or Anne, although all their documentation-as well as their photographs-was compared and their briefcase contents examined. There was an insistence upon testing the tape recorder to confirm that’s what it was. To get further into the hospital they had to pass through an airport-style electronic, metal-detecting frame.

When they caught up with him Brooking said, “That was outrageous! I’ll file a protest!”

“What’s the point?” pleaded Charlie. “They’re doing their job!”

“Authority is the point.”

“It might well be,” acknowledged Charlie, with a meaning Brooking didn’t comprehend. “There are times usefully to invoke it and there are times when you are going to fuck everything up, like now …”

“I don’t think …” broke in Brooking, in fresh outrage, only to be interrupted in turn by Anne Abbott.

“I do, Richard! If this all degenerates any worse and I’m asked why, I’m going to have to say you weren’t any help at all. In fact, that you got in the way. And we’re having a row within the hearing of Russians one, if not more of whom, I am sure speaks very good English. I’d also expect there to be CCTV cameras, with sound, and for every moment of this totally unnecessary nonsense to be recorded. Which I deeply regret, as I’m sure Charlie regrets. I thought we’d talked about this, on the way here.”

Brooking’s face burst crimson. “I …” he started, then abruptly stopped, his eyes searching the vestibule and the corridors leading from it for the threatening cameras.

“My name is Badim,” said a voice, behind Charlie. “Nicholai Iliach Badim. I am the surgeon-administrator. I can escort you, if you’re ready?” He spoke English.

“And I am Guerguen Semonovich Agayan, psychiatrist-incharge,” said a second man. He spoke English, too.

“We’re ready,” said Charlie. Fucked up before we start, he thought. Then he thought, no I’m not. It was unsettling to realize he’d begun to think of himself as part of a team, although while he was in England it had obviously been necessary to designate theeagerly accepting Donald Morrison as the local British contact with the now supposedly centralized investigation and to duplicate all the Russian witness interviews. Perhaps, for once, there needed to be a team.

The photo-comparison and briefcase check was repeated outside the guard-blocked ward but there was no attempt at body searching.

“Strictly half an hour,” said Badim. “We’ll stay with you.”

Brooking nodded in smiling agreement. Charlie thought how fortunate his earlier visit to the American embassy had been and said, “This is officially a British embassy interview, without the presence of any foreign nationals. We respect, of course, your medical restrictions. Which we’ll observe. But you cannot remain with us. Everything that is said is being recorded and will be made available to your authorities.”

Brooking made no move to speak.

Anne said, “That’s international law, once you’ve agreed he’s medically and mentally capable of being interviewed. Which you have.”

Badim said, “I’ll register a protest, as I did yesterday.”

“So will I,” threatened Agayan. “We’ll be directly outside, from where we can see the patient.”

“And we’ll abide to your time stipulation,” undertook Anne. Charlie wished she hadn’t, standing back for Anne and Brooking to go into the cramped room ahead of him. There were again four men inside, all of whom looked expressionlessly at them but made no move to leave. The gray-bandaged George Bendall lay gray faced on his gray bed, eyes closed.

Charlie said, “We’ll be half an hour.”

A surprisingly slight, bespectacled man said, “Our instructions are to remain at all times in the room with the prisoner.”

Charlie saw the record light was rhythmically throbbing on the heavy, antiquated Russian equipment beside the bed. “We want you to go.”

“We have our orders.”

Charlie moved to the dirt-fissured window to get a better signal on his cell phone and dialled the direct line into the American embassyincident room. Olga was very quickly on the line. Charlie said, “I’ll put you on to your people,” and passed the telephone to the clerk-like man, who listened without responding until the very end, when he said, “I understand.” He handed the telephone back to Charlie as he stood and still not speaking led the other Russians from the room.

Charlie was careful to place their recorder on a table on the opposite side of the bed to the still operating Russian machine, to avoid conflicting disturbance, gesturing Anne to the solitary chair vacated by the Russian recordist. There were two other chairs waiting at the door by the time he went to fetch them. Both Badim and Agayan lurked in the corridor. Charlie accorded Brooking the seat closest to the eyes-tight man, depressed the start button of their machine and nodded for the diplomat to open the encounter.

It was several moments before Brooking did so, not initially anticipating the invitation. He stumbled, several times calling Bendall by name in the hope of waking him. He looked sideways in confusion when the bandaged man remained with his eyes closed. Charlie made rotating movements with his hands for Brooking to continue, which the diplomat awkwardly did although limiting his contribution to setting out the consular representation. By the time he’d finished Brooking was visibly sweating and his starched, cut-away collar had garrotted an unbroken red line around his nervous throat.

“Do you understand everything I’ve said, Mr. Bendall?” concluded Brooking.

The feigned sleep continued. Brooking looked helplessly at Charlie and Anne.

Charlie said, “Vladimir Petrovich Sakov calls you a fucking idiot. Useless with it.” Although Charlie was concentrating intently upon the man in the tunnelled bed he was aware of Brooking’s wince. Bendall’s eyes remained steadfastly closed. Thirty minutes, remembered Charlie. “Vasili Gregorevich wouldn’t have said that, would he?”

There was a lid flicker, a stirring.

“You think Vasili Gregorevich died in an accident? I don’t. I think he was killed, probably by the same people who murdered your mother.” Olga Melnick should easily be able to recover all thedetails of the Timiryazev railways crossing crash by the afternoon. Hopefully with all the other officially tracable queries he’d raised earlier that morning. Charlie was aware of Anne’s uncertain frown across the raised bed covering.

Bendall’s eyes opened. At once Charlie said for the benefit of the tape, “George Bendall-Georgi Gugin-appears to have recovered consciousness,” and nudged Brooking into a repetition of the consular guarantee. Brooking reacted as if he were waking up too, but echoed virtually verbatim what he’d earlier registered on tape. Anne Abbott picked up the moment he finished, identifying herself as a lawyer there to formulate a defense, which would have to be presented in court by a Russian attorney.

“I don’t want any help from the British embassy. From the United Kingdom,” announced Bendall. His voice wasn’t as weak as it had been on the previous day’s tape to which Charlie had listened.

“Why are you going down for everyone else?” demanded Charlie, ignoring Anne’s fresh look of concern at what amounted to their dismissal by the man.

“No one else.”

“When did you get together?” asked Charlie. “It was the army, wasn’t it?”

Bendall began to hum, very softly, a tuneless wailing dirge that reminded Charlie of Middle Eastern music. Or Afghan, he reminded himself. “That where you met Vasili Gregorevich, in Afghanistan? Was he in the army with you?”

Bendall said something Charlie didn’t hear, his head turned, but Anne did. “Brother?” she queried.

There were no brothers! thought Charlie.

It was Anne who carried it on, understanding. “Is that where you formed the brotherhood? Joined it in Afghanistan?”

There was a moment’s more humming, then “Never knew.”

“You must have laughed at the officers, their not knowing?” said Charlie, taking Anne’s lead. The army record was one of drunken loutishness. It didn’t fit.

Bendall didn’t reply but he sniggered.

“You sure they didn’t know?” pressed Charlie. “You got punished a lot.”

“Didn’t understand.”

“What didn’t they understand, Georgi?” He didn’t like his English name, Charlie remembered.

“Didn’t understand.”

“Were you tricking them in the army … pretending …?” suggested Anne.

“Didn’t know.”

“That was clever,” said Anne, persuasively. “Good to stay together afterwards, too, when you left the army.”

“Meeting old friends … old comrades … every Tuesday and Thursday?” added Charlie. He was conscious of Brooking frowning in bewilderment between himself and Anne.

“Comrades,” said Bendall.

“Not at first, though,” prompted Charlie, recalling Vera Bendall’s account. “You didn’t meet up with them at first when you left the army, did you?”

The wailing hum rose and fell.

“Was that your song, what you sang when you were all together?” asked Anne.

It stopped, abruptly.

“Tell us the words, Georgi? It does have words, doesn’t it?” Fifteen minutes left, Charlie saw. He checked that their recorder was revolving smoothly.

“No one knows.”

No one knows what? thought Charlie, desperately. “Secret, like the brotherhood?” he guessed.

Bendall smiled. “Special.”

“You were, weren’t you Georgi?” said Anne. “A special person in a special group … special, secret group that noone knew about.”

“Shan’t tell you.”

“Did you swear an oath, Georgi?” asked Charlie. “Promise to be loyal to each other … protect each other?”

Bendall smiled but didn’t speak.

He said that it was right. That he had to, remembered Charlie. Bendall’s words when he was struggling for possession of the gun, according to Vladimir Sakov. “Was that what you were doing when you shot at the president, protecting the brotherhood?”

Bendall’s face clouded. “Had to.”

“Why did you have to?” pressed Anne. “What was the president going to do to hurt you and your friends?”

“I knew.”

“Tell us what you knew,” urged Anne.

“Right to do it.”

Even the same words, isolated Charlie. “Who told you that?”

“Someone who helped.”

“Who helped you?”

“Friend.”

“How many shots did you fire?” Another of Charlie’s reasons for going first to the U.S. embassy had been to discover how many cartridges had remained in the rifle’s ten-round magazine when it had been recovered, an obvious questions he was irritated at himself for not finding out earlier that it had been empty when it had been picked up after the fall.

“All of them.” The man’s eyes were becoming heavy.

“How many’s that?”

“Two.”

“Only two?”

“Special bullets. All they had.”

“Who’s ‘they’ Georgi?” came in Anne.

“Special,” said the man again.

He wasn’t referring to the cartridges, Charlie decided. “They’ll be very proud of you.”

“Yes.”

“Are you proud of them, to be one of the brotherhood?” asked Anne.

The smile was of a satisfied, proud man. He didn’t speak. Brooking was sitting back in his chair, legs extended full length in front of him, mind obviously elsewhere. Probably up his ass, thought Charlie.

“It’s good to belong to something: a proper-special-family, isn’t it?” coaxed Charlie.

The eyes closed, didn’t open.

“Georgi!” said Charlie, sharply. “Who are we? Why are we here?”

The eyes flickered open, although slowly. “Not going to tell you anything.”

“If I’m going to help defend you, you’ve got to tell me things I have to know,” said Anne, urgently.

“Too tired.”

“There’s a lot more time, as much time as you need,” said Anne. “All we need. We’ll come back again. For as long as it takes.”

Charlie didn’t totally believe Bendall was too tired to go on, but there was no way-no time because he was already aware of the doctors at the door-it could be challenged. Nor should it be. Over a life-time which seemed to begin when people had dinosaurs for pets Charlie believed he’d perfected an untrained ability to outpsychologize most psychologists. And the amateur Freudian diagnosis-even with the essential Freudian sexuality-encompassed wombs, although not physical ones, family dysfunction and surrogates, with generous outlets for mentally disturbed violence and an already beer-hall tested philosophy of foot-stamping marching songs and a lot of alcohol. Bendall had performed as much as he intended. And had unquestionably given away more than he wanted or imagined he had. It was important to leave Bendall thinking he’d controlled the encounter but with an eroding worm of doubt. “After you did it, how were they going to get you away, get you back safely among them?”

There was no obvious physical reaction but Charlie was sure Bendall wasn’t asleep and had heard him.

“Thank you, for being properly considerate,” said the waiting Badim, when they emerged. “I don’t after all think there’s anything officially to complain about.”

“This is probably the first of several sessions,” said Charlie. “One visit obviously isn’t enough.”

“I suppose not,” said Agayan, walking with them back through the cluttered corridors.

“You typed his blood when he was admitted, of course?”

“Of course,” confirmed Badim. “He needed transfusions. It’s AB.”

“Were there any other tests?”

Badim’s head came around sharply. “The only concern was to find the right blood group, for a safe transfusion.”

“You’ve still got some of the sample?”

“Yes?”

“Could we have some, now?”

Badim stopped. “Why?”

“We want to test for alcohol.” That was sufficient for the man to know, thought Charlie.

“It could be tested here.”

“And I’d appreciate a copy of those tests, just as I’m sure you’d like to know the result of our analysis. Which I’ll guarantee, for comparison.”

“I’m not sure I’m authorized.”

“It’s a medical request. I understood you to be the surgeon-administrator, the responsible authority?”

“I am!” said the easily offended man.

“A sample wouldn’t need any specific control. We could wait,” said Charlie, wanting to stop short of the heavily guarded vestibule. “And you know our authority is from the Kremlin.”

For several moments the man hovered, uncertainly. Then he gestured them into a room about two meters further along the corridor which they were never to know was from where Olga Melnik had the previous day gazed down upon the approach of her new lover. Agayan walked away with the other Russian.

Immediately inside Brooking said, “This has all been absurd, a total waste of time. The man is obviously mentally unwell. That will have to be the plea!”

“Obviously,” agreed Charlie. There was no way it could have been anticipated they’d be in this room so it wouldn’t be wired or cameraed but he still looked intently around.

Ignoring the diplomat, Anne said, “I told you we were a good team, didn’t I?”

“And I agreed,” reminded Charlie.

“What do you mean?” demanded Brooking.

“Just technical stuff,” said Charlie.

“I want a copy of that tape, to take with us to London,” said thelawyer. “It probably won’t be admissable in court but I want a psychiatric assessment.”

“So do I,” said Charlie.

“It’s much less of an embarrassment to the government if he’s certifiably insane, someone not mentally responsible for his actions,” offered Brooking. “That and the fact that he has lived here for twenty-six years.”

Charlie had to force himself to talk to the man. “Luck all the way along the line.”

Mikhail Badim reentered the room alone carrying a phial in his outstretched hand. “We’re testing for alcohol, too.”

“A comparison is essential, for an empirical result,” accepted Charlie. He was contributing more towards a mitigating defense than to the continuing investigation, but then that was the primary purpose of today’s interview.

In the car on the way back to the embassy Anne said to the diplomat, “Do you feel there’s any reason for you to come with us, for the next meeting?”

“Not at all,” said Brooking, hurriedly. “I think I fulfilled everything I had to do in today’s visit. I thought it all went very well, despite the unfortunate fellow’s obvious madness.”

“Very well indeed,” echoed Charlie.

Walter Anandale ended the urging of both Wendall North and the secretary of state for a diplomatic compromise by rejecting their suggestions in preference to his own, which didn’t include acting Russian president Aleksandr Okulov, and just as curtly ordered them to fix it.

Jeff Aston, the now unquestionably-obeyed head of presidential security, insisted they needed a highway-cleared, intersection-controlled route from the embassy to the hospital but gave the embassy as the return destination in the demand to the GIA traffic police. The Secret Service chief also insisted upon being in total media charge, once more restricting the still picture and television coverage of Anandale’s meeting with the Russian leader to American White House cameramen. It also guaranteed his being in total controlof their release, which was to be timed to give the impression that the American leader, his wife and entourage were still in Moscow when the intention was for them to be already high over the Atlantic, on their way to Washington.

The American president spent the first thirty minutes at the Pirogov hospital being reassured beyond the already promised reassurance from Admiral Donnington and a support group of Russian physicians that Ruth Anandale was sufficiently fit and recovered to be medevacced back to America. Only then did he go, completely encircled by agents and with the towering Aston by his side to the other wing of the hospital where North and Aston had spent those same thirty minutes hurriedly arranging the photocall with the Russian president’s protection squad.

Lev Maksimovich Yudkin was fully conscious, although still attached to drip-feeds and line-waving monitors-which made for fittingly dramatic pictures-but too weak for any conversation, which was not the intention anyway. Anandale was, however, posed as if they were in discussion as well as solicitously standing by the man’s bedside. It only took fifteen minutes.

As they made their way back to the American-commandeered wing James Scamell said, “This is going to be interpreted as a snub to Okulov.”

“Fix it with the statement we’re going to issue,” demanded Anandale. “Abrupt departure for urgent medical treatment for the First Lady … no time for official farewells apart from seeing the president whose recovery we’re delighted about …” He looked sideways at the secretary of state. “And your staying here-plus the unattributable briefings you’ll give-establishes that everything’s still on track.”

“You know what we’ve just shown by being allowed in like that?” demanded Aston, rhetorically. “That Russian security is godamned awful and that they haven’t learned a thing. Even you, Mr. President, shouldn’t have been allowed in. I wouldn’t have permitted it, if the situation had been reversed.”

Unseen, behind the president’s back, Wendall North gave the Secret Service chief the stiff middle finger.

In his wife’s room Anandale said, “We’re going home.”

“To get my arm fixed?” said the woman.

“To get your arm fixed,” agreed Anandale.

Olga Melnik had already heard the Russian tape but went through the pretense of reading the transcript Charlie took back to the embassy incident room, together with his original recording to become part of the evidence collection. While she did-with John Kayley in his room absorbing it for the first time-Charlie studied the autopsy report on Vera Bendall.

He skipped the normal medical introduction, although noting that the woman was described as generally under-nourished, eager for the specific findings. The cricord cartilage of the larynx had been crushed but the odontoid peg of the second cervical vertabrae was intact, which it would not have been if she had succeeded in properly hanging herself. There were three lesions in the neck caused by the support metal breaking through the left bra cup. There was pre-death bruising to her shoulder blades and to the back of the head, which the pathologist attributed to the back of her body hitting the cell door, presumably in her death throes or in the agony of strangulation. No photographs had been taken of the body before it was removed but according to the prison guards’ reports the woman had been virtually in a sitting position, with her back against the door. There were mortuary photographs of the body, naked, showing strangulation bruising completely encircling the neck. There was bruising on the finger endings of both hands which the medical examiner suggested were caused by the woman’s instinctive efforts to loosen the ligature in the final moments before death. The pathologist described as lividity the discoloration to Vera Bendall’s knees and thigh and to both buttocks, all of which was clearly visible on other post mortem photographs. In the opinion of the Russian pathologist the medical evidence was as consistent with a choking person’s failed, last minute change of mind when an attempted suicide hanging went wrong as it was with any suggestion of foul play, which made it too inconclusive for either definitive finding.

“But not for me,” declared Charlie, carrying the report out into the larger room as Kayley and Olga emerged from theirs.

“I think I hear you,” welcomed Kayley.

“And I’ve heard John’s opinion,” continued Olga.

There was an inherent moment of reluctance, not actually at sharing but at the worry of not knowing how it would be interpreted and acted upon by people whose minds worked so much differently from his. This was a static evaluation of something that had to be carried on, Charlie reminded himself. Which Kayley had obviously already decided. “As the pathologist remarks, there unfortunately aren’t any photographs of Vera Bendall in the position in which she actually died. Three guards-and the prison doctor-have sworn statements that she choked herself, by twisting her bra around her throat, attaching it to the cell’s protruding locking mechanism and then dropping in the expectation of breaking her neck. Which wasn’t ever possible. We know the precise measurements of the lock, from the ground, is only a meter. Her neck didn’t break, couldn’t have broken. She was suspended-according to what the guards’ evidence suggest-with her legs and buttocks virtually against the ground, slowly to suffocate …”

“Which is what the pathologist describes,” broke in Olga, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“There are too many things that don’t click together,” came back Charlie. “Lividity is after death bruising, when the blood puddles at the lowest possible point in the body, where it’s no longer being pumped because the heart’s stopped. Medically-provably-Vera Bendall has blood puddling in both knees and both buttocks. She can’t have died in two positions. She either died on her knees. Or on her back, which accounts for the much more substantial blood collection in her buttocks …” Charlie offered the series of mortuary photographs showing the continuous, unbroken pre-death bruising around Vera Bendall’s throat. “That marking isn’t possible if she half-suspended herself, with her back against the door and her calves and buttocks against the ground. The strangulation line would have been continuous in the front but not at the back: her weight would have kept the ligature away from the nape of her neck, leaving it unmarked. Vera Bendall was choked to death from behind, on her knees, her neck totally encircled from behind until she died. The bruising to her head and shoulders came from her struggling against the knees, pressed hard up against her, of her killer like the bruisingto her fingers came from trying to prise the ligature away. She was held like that, throttled on her knees, long enough for the blood to begin to puddle in the front. Which it did even more obviously in these pictures when she was turned on to her back and the bra attached to the door lock.”

Olga turned to Kayley. The American said, “I didn’t get the total neck encirclement. It makes it even stronger.”

“I want to take all the autopsy material back to England, get independent pathology opinions,” said Charlie, talking to the American. “You doing the same?”

Kayley nodded, lighting one of his aromatic cigars. “You want to tell us about England?”

Charlie wasn’t aware of any air extractors in the main room, feeling the passive fumes at the back of his throat. “Consultation, with my directorate. Bullshit bureaucracy. The usual stuff. You’re both set up here: no need. I’m not.”

There was obvious disbelief on the faces of both Olga Melnik and John Kayley. Charlie humped his shoulders, exaggeratedly. “That’s all it is. There isn’t anything more.” He was glad of the precaution of taking his packed case to Protocnyj Pereulok that morning: he had hoped to go back to Lesnaya to say goodbye again to Natalia and Sasha but this was taking longer than he expected.

The American matched Charlie’s shrug, exhaling a wobbling smoke ring at the same time. “If you say so, Charlie.”

“I say so.” Why the fuck didn’t anyone believe him when he was actually being honest!

Kayley made a flag of the transcript Charlie had just delivered. “You sure as hell got under his skin.”

“Opened some doors, maybe,” allowed Charlie. To Olga he said, “Is there anything on the Isakov death at Timiryazev?”

“Accepted-until now-as an accident,” replied the woman. “All I’ve been able to get so far is the basic militia report. It’s an ungated crossing. His car stalled, straddling the line. Hit by the Kalininin express so hard it virtually broke in half …”

“Autopsy?” interrupted Charlie.

Olga shook her head. “And of course he’s been buried. I’ll apply for his exhumation.”

“What about a military record?”

“The detailed request has gone to the Ministry of Defense.”

“And an organization … a brotherhood …?” pressed Charlie. He’d definitely run out of time to get back to Lesnaya.

“That too, as soon as we find, if we can find, whatever service Vasili Isakov was in.”

“I bumped into a lot of your guys checking vantage points for the second gunman?” Charlie told Kayley. “There were more of them than me so I left them to it.”

“Four possible high rises, the tallest the Comecon building,” recounted Kayley, wearily. “They even checked the Ukraina Hotel across the river. Between the most obvious buildings there’s a total of forty-two positions, eight more if you want to include the almost impossible hanging-out-of-the-window points. No one heard anything, saw anything, although most were looking from their windows at the presidential arrival. No shell casings found by my guys or handed in, before they asked. Two more high rises that could conceivably have been used. They’re being checked because everything’s being checked.”

It was like climbing Everest backwards, wearing skis, thought Charlie, who’d never dreamed of risking his feet in such contraptions. “I’ll only be away two days, tops. Donald Morrison’s taking over.”

“I want to see Bendall for myself,” announced Kayley. “It’s the murder of an American that’s going to be the major charge. You’ve had your consular access.”

“He’s Russia’s prisoner,” said Charlie.

“But you’re no official problem?”

Charlie supposed he should have checked legally with Anne Abbott. Richard Brooking never came into his thinking. “None at all.”

Kayley said, “Thanks for that at least.”

Charlie let it go. “Luck with the interview.” He already knew how he would pursue the next meeting with Bendall but had no intention of prompting the American. It was always possible John Kayley might nerve-touch something far more productive than what he’d so far achieved. It would be interesting-although hopefully not ultimately demoralizing-to see.

“I intended to get back, to say goodbye, but we over-ran.”

“OK.” There even seemed to be a distance in the sound of her voice on the telephone.

“I think the Bendall interview is good. It’s on file in the incident room, if you want to access it.”

“OK.”

“Any problems today?”

“No.”

“I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”

“You said.”

“Tell Sasha I love her.”

“Remember what I said about a present.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Keep safe.”

On their way to Sheremet’yevo in the embassy car Anne Abbott said, “I’m back to thinking there’s a dramatic defense.”

“We’re a long way from finding it.”

“You sure the accountants will stand our staying at the Dorchester?”

“By the time they get the bill we’ll have been and gone. They won’t have any alternative.”

“Do you go out of your way to upset people?”

“Do I upset you?”

“You make me laugh. And curious.”

“You ever see Liberace perform?”

Anne exploded into laughter. “I only just know who Liberace was! What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’ve got his glass piano in the Dorchester bar. It’s pure kitsch. You’ll like it.”

Charlie answered the car phone, on the central reservation beside the driver. Morrison said, “Moscow Radio has disclosed the second gunman. There’s been an official Russian government enquiry; Brooking’s going around in circles. Olga Melnik’s been on, demanding to know if it was us. I told her we hadn’t broken the agreement.”

“Who did it?” asked Anne, when Charlie relayed the conversation.

“Something else on the long list of what we don’t know,” said Charlie.

“It worked letting the British have the second interview,” declared Zenin.

“It was a good idea,” agreed Olga.

It had been his idea for her to cook at his apartment that night and she was nervous because in this ridiculously short time it had become overwhelmingly important to go on impressing him, the unfamiliar need for which made her even more nervous. She’d chosen pasta with clams and mussels and squid-trying for the joke by insisting the Black Sea fish were a Crimean souvenir she’d collected from the hospital the previous day-and he’d seemed to think it funny as well as continuing the Italian theme with Chianti.

“The Englishman’s very good. The woman, too.”

“What did the Defense Ministry say?” asked Olga. The request for anything known about Vasili Gregorevich Isakov and brotherhoods had been made with Zenin’s superior authority to ensure a matchingly authoratitive response.

“That secret societies aren’t permitted in any of the services. I told them that wasn’t the question.”

“What about my-our-interrogating Bendall again?”

“We’ll see if giving the Americans as well as the English their turn is the good idea it’s proved to be so far. The Americans can go ahead of us; we can use whatever they get, when we go again. Waiting will also give us time to hear back from the military. That’s where the conspiracy is, what we’ve got to find.”

“What about the second gunman leak?”

“It was anonymous. A telephone call.”

“Which they reported without trying to check?”

“I’ve got people looking into it.”

He leaned across the table, touching his glass to hers. “The pasta’s wonderful. This is wonderful.”

“I’m glad,” she said, responding to both remarks.

“I haven’t asked you yet if you’re married?”

“I’m not,” she said. She looked around the apartment. “I suppose your wife could be away, although speaking as a trained investigator there isn’t any obvious evidence of anyone else living here.”

“If there was one she could be away,” Zenin agreed, smiling back. “But there isn’t.”

“I’m embarrassed now to have said that! Shit!”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

Olga thought it couldn’t be happening so soon, so quickly.